The present invention relates generally to articles of furniture. More specifically, the invention concerns furniture that is xe2x80x9cready-to-assemblexe2x80x9d or knockdown.
Knock-down or ready-to-assemble furniture has long been a welcome substitute for the traditional, one-piece, articles of furniture. Ready-to-assemble, or RTA, furniture is significantly cheaper than its more formal counterpart, which makes it a viable option for the college student furnishing a dorm room or a first-time apartment dweller or home buyer. Moreover, RTA furniture is popular with children because of the wide range of configurations that can be achieved with this type of furniture.
RTA furniture is also popular with parents because it represents an affordable alternative for furnishing a child""s room or recreation or TV room that is subject to abnormal wear and tear. It is well-known that children, and particularly teenagers and young adults, can be extremely hard on furniture. Rather than spend a large amount of money on traditional furniture that will have its ordinary useful life cut short, many parents prefer to furnish with cheaper articles of furniture, such as RTA furniture. While the cheaper furniture may have a shorter life, the much lower cost makes periodic replacement preferable.
Knock-down or RTA furniture has been around for decades. Most prior RTA furniture relies upon interlocking notches and maintaining a tight fit between the spliced notches to keep the article of furniture solid. Of course, over time, the notches would wear and the fit between the components would become so sloppy as to render the article nearly unusable.
In addition, most prior RTA furniture has required specific sets of components, configured to generate a specific type of furniture. Thus, if a consumer wanted a chair, it was necessary to obtain a chair kit, and if a sofa was desired, a sofa kit was required. Knock-down furniture of this type does not take advantage of one possible benefit of RTA furniture, namely the ability to instantly convert one article to another article using many of the same components.
There remains a need for RTA furniture that is both inexpensive and versatile. The furniture must be able to achieve solid construction and to maintain its integrity over long periods of usage. In addition, the RTA furniture must have a desirable, and sometimes fun, appearance.